Who's going to hold onto the environmental hot potato?

As an international development minor, the impact of the current climate change crisis on the relationship between industrialized and developing countries strikes me as a crucial element to the future global stage. While international conventions say that everyone needs to do their part, who’s to say who is to blame for the environmental crisis?

Taking responsibility for climate change issues in a country’s domestic legislation is like a political hot potato that no one wants to hold onto. When you look from the view of a state, why would you? Who is going to willingly cut back on their oil usage for more efficient but much more expensive green technology? Who is going to say, it’s okay, we’ll stop trading so much because of the transportation costs, we won’t produce as much for our people and lose competitiveness on the international stage, you other countries just keep doing what you’re doing and we’ll willingly pay more money and fall behind. Not a chance.

Of course, OECD countries are historically the main emitters of CO2 emissions and through the Western industrialization period in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it can be argued that they are the ones who got us into this mess. Plus because of this industrialization they have much higher GDPs (among other reasons), so shouldn’t they pay? Theoretically yes, but they won’t, and here’s why: developing countries aren’t strong enough to make them. As we’ve seen in the reading about the shrimp turtle case, trade has a huge influence on a country’s decision-making process.

For example, if the US were dependent on Southeast Asian shrimp in this case they would have never argued against the product due to environmental protection laws. So if a small country like the Philippines decided they didn’t like the practices of US corn farms, would they restrict trade? Probably not since they would lose resources and the local economy would suffer. The same concept can answer why developing countries cannot force OECD countries to rightfully spend their much more abundant resources on improving CO2 emissions. If they did, they risk losing their trade relations and severely injuring their GDP and country’s development.

So if the developing countries don’t have the economical push needed to make OECD countries pay, what happens next? Countries meet in huge gatherings like the Kyoto protocol and Montreal and try to come to agreements so that everyone does a little bit more to make things better. Then, much like college group projects, no one does that much until something bad happens like a huge international environmental crisis (or when your project is due the next day).

Then the blame game begins and everyone looks to who is increasing CO2 emissions today as opposed to the countries that have gotten us into this mess. Guess who? Developing countries. Many up and coming countries such as China, India, countries throughout Africa, and others are going through their industrial revolution right now due to new technologies and more stable economies. It only seems fair that they need to stop their current practices that are emitting black smoke from their factories into the air and black sludge into the rivers.

However, after industrialized countries did all these things and more and were giving the chance to build their economy to the point where they can afford green technology, OECD countries may not have the right to tell emerging economies they cannot continue. With this viewpoint, the safest way to attack the issue might be to make everyone decrease the country’s greenhouse gases by a certain percentage. This runs into a capacity issue. If every country is meant to decrease their impact by 20 percent, a country like the US may be able but unwilling, while a country like the Philippines may not be able to stop their production status and continue to provide for their population.

So this is the situation we find ourselves in. Developed countries have contributed the most to the situation in the past but don’t have much obligation to change their ways. Developing countries are contributing now but don’t want to stop their production and can’t make developed countries change in fear of losing trade. Round and round it goes, with no one wanted to hold on to the responsibility of the ever increasing and threatening global warming. This post has asked a lot of questions, but the ultimate question is this: what is going to have to happen to make countries realize that if we continue in the same way, we might not have a world at all?